Young people cultivated hope in the face of fear by singing to God during flood

Irene and Cecilia are sisters and live in Paiporta (Spain), with their parents and two brothers. Last Tuesday, October 29, when the floods devastated their city and several others located in the east of the country, they were alone in their house.

At 6:30 p.m., the beginning of the disaster found them having a quiet snack in the kitchen: “Cecilia and I were having a Colacao in the kitchen,” Irene tells ACI Prensa simply.

They didn’t suspect anything, because the patio of the house was dry. Not even when the videos of the ravine overflowing on social media began to reach them, did they think that the nightmare was going to unfold.

However, when they looked at the street door, they saw that 40 centimeters of water was already flowing, something more or less common. In fact, the main entrance of the house is prepared with a plastic parapet in its lower part to prevent water from penetrating the two-story house.

“Then, there came a time when there was so much water, so much pressure, that as always, water began to enter the house under the door,” so they began to cover the entrance with towels and blankets. “But it came in so quickly and with so much water, with so much pressure, that it was impossible.”

“The Lord is my light and my salvation”

Music is very present in his house. On the ground floor there are microphones, a mixing console, guitars, pianos… When they realized that things were more serious than usual, they hurriedly collected all these belongings, the computers and everything valuable and took them to the upper floor.

In the end, the water would rise to a height of 2 meters and 20 centimeters, which destroyed everything they could not save: “Our entire ground floor is now outside my house. There is not a single appliance, not a single piece of furniture. It’s horrible. “Everything was gone, everything was scrapped, everything was in pieces,” he details.

While they were saving everything they could, they began to sing: “While we were carrying things up, I was just singing a Batah song called The Lord is my light and my salvation”, a musicalization of Psalm 27 whose chorus reads: “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life, tell me who will make me tremble?

“I can say that at no time did I feel afraid,” Irene states without hesitation. Despite the uncertainty, he reiterates “at no time did I say ‘we are not going to go out, we are not going to be able to tell it’.”

Her sister Cecilia, on the other hand, feared for her life and, even more, for her salvation: “She was extremely overwhelmed thinking that she was dying,” her sister remembers. “Let me know if we can die, please. Let me know because I have to confess,” he said. Then, they managed to call a priest, in whom Cecilia managed to find comfort.

Once installed on the upper floor, they looked for a corner where they could have some light. It had already become night. “We took a mattress upstairs, where there was an emergency light, where we could see each other a little more,” they say.

At one point, a crash was heard below. The entrance to the house, “a gigantic gate that weighs a quintal,” gave way. Irene ran down and tried to close the door with all her strength and an office chair dragged by the current entered the house: “I was shouting to my sister from below: ‘Cecilia, come down and help me!’ And, Cecilia, yelling at me. And I didn’t listen to her.”

“I thought I had already died,” continues Irene, who explains that the sisters had seen the film repeatedly. Impossible, which narrates the adventures of a family during the tsunami that affected Thailand in 2004.

However, Cecilia gathered the courage to reach the floor below and help her sister close the door, which took a lot, but they did it. This helped prevent as much water from entering or, at least, not as quickly.

They climbed back up, soaked. The emergency light had gone out, so they lit the candles they managed to locate.

“Once we sang, everything went away: fear and worry”

“Once we were calm, we said: Let’s start singing.” And that’s how they began to raise their voices, accompanied by a guitar. When they finished, they decided to record a video to send to their families “so they can be calm, that we are fine, that we are alive.”

That recording later went viral, among other things because one of the relatives of these two girls is Father Federico Ferrando, a young priest of the Archdiocese of Valencia.

“Once we sang, everything went away: the fear and the worry.” Additionally, surprisingly, they had mobile phone coverage and were able to stay in touch with their families, all safe, when practically the entire network was down.

“We didn’t expect the song to go viral. We sent her through the home group and the family group, so that they knew that we were fine, that we were calm, that they didn’t worry about us,” they explain.

The song that they sang and that has dazzled so many, is titled I love youis the work of the Valencian Teresa Requena and can be found in Spotifyperformed alongside her siblings, Pedro and Irene.

Its chorus goes like this:

“Fear no more, God is with you.
You are special, you have found favor in his eyes.
Although many doubts come to lurk,
He will hold you. You will find happiness.”

Singing that melody became a prayer indirectly: “It was not a song that we chose to pray, but it always helps us calm down and put ourselves at peace.”

But, as they sang, they noticed great relief: “That’s it, that’s it. It’s already happened. We can cry whatever we cry. We even managed to laugh,” Irene recalls.